Clustering Algorithms and Validation Indices for a Wide mmWave Spectrum

Radio channel propagation models for the millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum are extremely important for planning future 5G wireless communication systems. Transmitted radio signals are received as clusters of multipath rays. Identifying these clusters provides better spatial and temporal characteristics of the mmWave channel. This paper deals with the clustering process and its validation across a wide range of frequencies in the mmWave spectrum below 100 GHz. By way of simulations, we show that in outdoor communication scenarios clustering of received rays is influenced by the frequency of the transmitted signal. This demonstrates the sparse characteristic of the mmWave spectrum (i.e., we obtain a lower number of rays at the receiver for the same urban scenario). We use the well-known k-means clustering algorithm to group arriving rays at the receiver. The accuracy of this partitioning is studied with both cluster validity indices (CVIs) and score fusion techniques. Finally, we analyze how the clustering solution changes with narrower-beam antennas, and we provide a comparison of the cluster characteristics for different types of antennas.